The invention relates to a suspension container for incubating reptile eggs. More particularly, the invention relates to a container which holds a plurality of reptile eggs, and helps maintain environmental moisture levels during incubation.
For many years, man has sought to carry out part of nature's reproductive processes by incubating the eggs of various creatures. Most typically it is aviary creatures that have been incubated, especially where they bear relevance to farming and food production systems. Significant discoveries and developments have lead to vastly improved systems for aviary egg incubation.
Reptile incubation has also become increasingly popular, in both scientific and hobbyist settings. As reptiles become more popular as pets, many hobbyists seeks to breed reptiles in captivity from their own breeding pairs. Other hobbyists recover and incubate eggs that are laid by wild reptiles in natural settings.
As artificial incubation of reptile eggs has become even more common, it has become clear that systems and rules commonly applied to aviary incubation do not necessarily result in successful reptile incubation. For example, it is a common practice to rotate bird eggs during incubation. Rotating an incubating reptile egg after it has set (within 3-4 days of being laid), however, will likely kill the developing reptile.
In general it must be considered that the natural environment for incubating reptiles is very different than incubating birds. Bird eggs generally incubate in the dry open air that is found up high in trees. Reptile eggs, however, generally incubate in deep underground boroughs, in cooler but not cold, moist but not wet environments.
Accordingly, while much of the prior art is concerned with care of aviary eggs, this does not adequately inform proper systems and techniques necessary for the care of reptile eggs. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,196,160 to Pas discloses an egg incubating tray which is configured for incubating a massive number of chicks. Similarly, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,196,159 and 5,568,791 to Dratt disclose systems for incubating poultry eggs. U.S. Pat. No. 5,146,871 to Havran discloses an incubator and hatcher tray which is tilted and inverted during incubation. U.S. Pat. No. 3,489,124 to Cannon discloses an incubator egg tray that is designed for air circulation and for rotating the eggs during incubation. U.S. Pat. No. 2,074,190 to Robbins describes an incubator that is configured to avoid the spread of disease through the development of germs on egg-particles from already hatched chicks. U.S. Pat. No. 702,780 to Darling discloses an egg tray that has an open bottom, and uses partitions to ensure that an accurate record is kept of each particular hen and of the egg producing it.
While these units may be suitable for the particular purpose employed, or for general use, they would not be as suitable for the purposes of the present invention as disclosed hereafter.